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Carl Dennis
Carl Dennis (born September 17, 1939) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and academic. Life Youth Dennis was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 17, 1939. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Chicago before earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1961. In 1966, Dennis received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Career In 1966 Denny became an assistant professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he has spent most of his career; in 2002, he became an artist-in-residence there. Dennis has also served on the faculty of the graduate program at Warren Wilson College. University at Buffalo news release. Article and Interview in UB Today, University at Buffalo's online alumni magazine. Dennis is the brother of American composer Robert Dennis. Writing Dennis writes often of quotidian, middle-class life, but beneath the modest, reasonably lighted surfaces of the poems lie unexpected possibilities that create contrast and vibrancy. An example from his 1984 collection The Near World is "The Man on My Porch Makes Me an Offer," which begins: :"Above all houses in our town :I've always loved this blue one you own :With its round turret and big bay window. :Do you dream about it the way I do? :Wouldn't you be just as happy :On a street with more trees :In a larger house, whose columned porch :Impresses every passer-by? :Does it seem fair that you've won the right :To gaze from these windows your whole life :Merely because you saw them first, :And consign me to a life of envy?" William Slaughter has given a close reading of this poem in an essay comparing poems by William Stafford, Dennis, and Louis Simpson. The form of Dennis's poem - a plainspoken, dramatic monologue - is fairly characteristic of his poetry. In the poem "Progressive Health" (from Practical Gods) Dennis uses a similar approach for a proposition that is a bioethicist's nightmare. In some of his more recent poems, Dennis invokes guardian angels and other domestic deities to animate his poetry. In his 2004 review, David Orr wrote: Review of Carl Dennis's New and Selected Poems: 1974-2004. In his 1984 review, Tom Sleigh addressed the originality of Dennis's art: Review of Carl Dennis's The Near World. Recognition His book Practical Gods won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Dennis has received several prizes for his poetry in addition to the Pulitzer Prize, including a Fellowship at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1988), and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2000). Publications Poetry *''A House of My Own''. Braziller, 1974. *''Climbing Down''. Braziller, 1976. *''Signs and Wonders''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. *''The Near World''. New York: Quill, 1985. *''The Outskirts of Troy''. New York: W. Morrow, 1988. *''Meetings with Time''. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. *''Ranking the Wishes''. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. *''Practical Gods''. New York: Penguin Poets, 2001. *''New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004''. New York: Penguin Poets, 2004. *''Unknown Friends''. New York: Penguin Poets, 2007. ISBN 978-0-14-303875-7 *''Callings''. New York: Penguin Poets, 2010. Non-fiction *''Poetry as Persuasion''. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.Carl Dennis b. 1939, Poetry Foundation, Web, Sep. 2, 2012. Audio / video *''Alfred Corn and Carl Dennis: Reading their poems in the Coolidge Auditorium, Nov. 8, 1982'' (tape). Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1982. *''New and Selected Poems,1974-2004'' (CD). Chautauqua, NY: Chautauqua Institution, 2006. Except where noted, discographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Barry Dempster + audiobook, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Sep. 15, 2015. See also * List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems * "The God Who Loves You" *Carl Dennis, Two Poems ("In the Coffee Shop," "The God Who Loves You") * Carl Dennis b. 1939 at the Poetry Foundation ;Books *Carl Dennis at Amazon.com ;About *Carl Dennis at The Pulitzer Prizes *Carl Dennis at the University of Arizona Poetry Center * Dennis' faculty homepage at University at Buffalo. * * Category:1939 births Category:American poets Category:Living people Category:Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners Category:University at Buffalo alumni Category:Oberlin College alumni Category:University of Minnesota alumni Category:Jewish poets Category:20th-century poets Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:American academics Category:State University of New York faculty